Courtroom Workgroup Essay

The purpose of court is straight forward, to bring a conflict to justice. As simple as that sounds there are many more roles than a judge and a jury. Bringing a conflict to justice is a team effort, that team is known as a courtroom work group. One of the major roles of this team is the prosecutor. The prosecutor is the attorney representing the state in one of the many trials on hand. With the excessive amounts of trials, the courtroom has a process called criminal justice funnel. This process helps minimize the amount of trials that are pending. The court room work group is a team of individuals processing the trial. Several groups make up the courtroom work groups. The criminal prosecutor, defense attorney, and a judicial officer make up the most common courtroom work group. Each individual has specific duties as part of the group. The judge is responsible for issuing warrants towards a defendant, determining bail amount or if bail is granted or denied, and presiding over trials. Defense attorney are appointed to the defendant. These attorneys can be privately retained which can be costly. Prosecuting attorneys known as the prosecutors or District Attorneys represents the state in criminal cases. There are other work group members such as the law clerks, court clerks, administrators, jurors, witnesses, police officers, and on occasion the news media. The criminal justice can be a long everlasting process. To help speed up the processing of the increasing number of cases that rise every minute, a relationship forms in courtrooms between the main groups in the system, including the judge, defense counsel and prosecutor. The courtroom workgroup shows remarkable explanatory power in overburdened courts dealing with large caseloads. I believe that there are certain changes that can be made to the courtroom. Having higher security for more violent offenders should be taking into precaution. Some jurors need to take into consideration the evidence that is being brought up upon them. I know of many cases that the defendant is declared guilty then later found out they were innocent. There will also always be the criminals let go because of a lack of evidence to convince a jury.